MacWorld 2006 Roundup

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Hot new products from the Expo floor. Keynote coverage and Photo Tour too!

By Gerry Block

Fast off the heels of CES, MacWorld San Francisco ran through this entire week, from the 9th to the 13th. Since Apple likes the spotlight all to itself for big announcements, MacWorld has historically been the place where Steve Jobs shows the hottest new products at his Keynote address. This year was no exception, and Jobs officially unveiled the first Intel based Apple computers ever: the hot new MacBook Pro and an updated iMac. The switch to Intel chips from PowerPC seems to have been a pretty smart move, as the MacBook Pro boasts more than 4 times the processing power as the previous G4 PowerBooks. For a full report on the Keynote, check this out.

Need to feel like you were there, even if you weren't? Browse through our photo tour of the MacWorld Expo floor right here.

Though rumors that Jobs would also show some sort of hardware or software with TiVo style functionality proved to be unfounded, there the MacBook Pro was not the only hot new piece of Gear. There were iPod accessories galore on the Expo floor, and a fair number of them were quite new and cool. JBL announced and showed the "JBL On Time Sound System and Time Machine" iPod listening station, a rather cool looking new device that might open a hole in the space-time continuum if operated incorrectly. Not only does it look sexy, but it can wake you up in the morning with your favorite tunes straight from the iPod, and it sounds like something from the future thanks to what JBL is calling "Halo Acoustics." It will be available in March 2006 at an MSRP of $299.95.

Press the wrong button and your iPod will be sent to the future, where they will laugh at your taste in music.

There are plenty of solutions for getting an iPod hooked up to a home stereo system, but iPod and automobile integration has been an ongoing difficulty for most people. FM transmitters are generally intermittent and degrade audio quality, tape-deck adapters work well, but few cars and tape-decks anymore, and getting a mini-jack installed for your car's head unit ends up looking ghetto and won't power your iPod. We searched the expo floor for the best solutions around, and were quite impressed by the demo of the Harman Kardon Drive + Play system. Combining a brain that is hardwired into a car's head-unit, a mountable LCD screen that replicates the iPod's interface, and a mountable jog-dial that covers all click-wheel functionality, the Drive + Play system looked hot. The system has been available for a number of months and is priced at $199.95. We hope to have a kit installed in the IGN Gear Mini Cooper test platform for review quite soon.

Dial up your favorite tunes without crashing!

Read on for the crazy lookin' iWoofer, the newest high-end earphones from Shure, and a simple way to make any iPod into a video player.